


Good Vibrations

by tj_teejay



Series: The *other* Sunshineverse(s) [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - Biological Warfare, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Gen, Neurological Disorders, Sunshineverse, Survival, Terminal Illnesses, feral!Matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 06:36:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4777223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tj_teejay/pseuds/tj_teejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy hasn’t slept in days, and sleep deprivation finally takes its toll. Matt helps out, and finds something unexpected in the process. (Plays in the same universe as MomentumDeferred's story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547">"Sunshine"</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Vibrations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MomentumDeferred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547) by [MomentumDeferred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentumDeferred/pseuds/MomentumDeferred). 



> This takes place in the universe of MomentumDeferred’s (a.k.a. Ash’s) story ["Sunshine"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4217547), which is posted on AO3. It was written and posted with Ash’s permission and is pretty much completely AU as far as the Sunshineverse is concerned. And I shall just classify this as SWP—Sunshineverse without plot. Kind of a slice-of-life thing, I suppose. Then again, you can never have too much feral!Matt and kickass!Foggy in your life, so that’s my excuse. And I also suppose this is as close to fluff as it’ll ever get in the Sunshineverse. But I’ll leave you to judge for yourselves.  
> If you’re interested in more stories that play in the Sunshineverse, check out Ash’s [Sunshineverse Tumblr](http://sunshineverse.tumblr.com/), or, ahem... [mine](http://half-feral.tumblr.com/).

+-+-+-+-+

Sleep.

Every sense of the word had taken over Foggy’s brain. He’d never been so fucking tired in his entire life—and that meant a lot, what with aliens extinguishing pretty much all that had ever been good and just in this world, and the planet basically going to hell from then on out.

He couldn’t even remember when was the last time he slept. It had just been non-stop the last few days. They were so low on water that Karen had urged Foggy to give up a few of his medical supplies to trade them for water with a settlement in Yonkers that they’d had previous dealings with.

And so Karen was off on her own to go north. Perhaps not the smartest plan ever devised, but they all knew they couldn’t very well turn up with a domesticated feral and expect to be welcomed with open arms. Karen had insisted, and then insisted some more, and Foggy had eventually caved.

And now, with Matt and Foggy back on their own, making their way to Karen’s suggested rendezvous point, constant shit had happened and just never stopped. Ferals attacking. Aliens attacking. Matt being Mr. Antsy Pants when they finally found a place to rest, only to be roused again by approaching ferals before Foggy had a chance to doze off.

He wanted to drop dead right here, in the middle of the street. Curl up into a ball and just drift off into dreamland. Fuck the cold, the absence of blankets, the fact that there was zero protection or shelter. He really was _that_ tired.

“Foggy?”

Matt’s voice wafted through the haze of what his consciousness had become. All he could do was grunt in return. Somewhere along the way his legs had stopped working, and he was too exhausted to even attempt willing them back into submission.

“Foggy. Not stop. Not good.” Translation: Bad idea. This is dangerous.

Yeah, Matt got that right. Then again, there wasn’t really any place left in this shithole of a city that wasn’t dangerous. But right smack in the middle of a three-lane intersection, all the spaces wide open (ruined buildings and stumps of burned trees notwithstanding) was definitely one of the most _un_ safe places to be.

“I can’t,” he heard himself say. When had he become such a washout?

“Foggy, why?”

“Cause I’m tired. Like you won’t believe-tired. Like I can’t take another step-tired.”

“Tired. Mm, am tired. Move. Foggy, move. Like me.”

Was the little shit giving him a pep talk? Foggy wanted to sink to his knees. Or into a sitting position. Lying position. Just a bit of rest, he’d be fine. Two minutes. Maybe five.

“Foggy, no,” Matt urged, tugging at his arm. Upwards. Cause he was now on the ground on his knees, and he didn’t even remember how that happened. “Come. Shelter. There.”

With great effort Foggy lifted his head, fighting against the drooping of his eyelids. Matt’s head was twitching, the tremor running right up Foggy’s arm from where Matt’s left hand was grabbing him. It was hard to tell what he meant, but there was a dark green banister on the sidewalk.

A subway entrance. It seemed very far away. Too far for the fact that all his muscles had turned to lead-infused Jell-O, and his head was spinning with a strange kind of floating vertigo.

“Later, okay? Five minutes, Matt. Give me five damn minutes.”

“Foggy. Foggyyyy,” Matt all but whined, tugging harder at his arm, and, damn, there was just something about that tone that cut right through all of Foggy’s defenses.

He drew in a deep breath and let it out through his nose. Then another one. It took him four to be able to move.

Matt pulled him up, pulled him to a standing position, pulled him close. Foggy had never been gladder that they had found each other again, because Matt was still a fucking superhero, even with his brain royally screwed up.

“Foggy, move. Not far.”

Yep. Definitely pep talk. Or at least the half feral-Matt version of it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there. Give me a fucking minute for my legs to start working again, okay?”

“Mm. No. Now. Not good, Foggy.”

Foggy sighed inwardly. Not another attack. He couldn’t handle another attack, because adrenaline only got you so far.

“Please don’t tell me there’s more ferals in the vicinity. Or worse: aliens. Don’t they live down there?”

Matt stilled for a moment, his eyes tracking something invisible. “Not this... this one. Is not good... here out all, mm, open.”

 _Not quite, Matty,_ Foggy thought. Expressions were hard.

“Fog-gy!” It was vehement. Forceful. Two syllables. A fucking Matt-shaped command.

“Okay. I’m coming.”

Foggy’s legs still felt like rubber, but he managed to somehow make them carry his body across the intersection. Matt tried his best to support some of his weight, which must be looking really damn weird. They were such an odd pair when you thought about it.

They stopped at the top of the stairs. Ever since that day the shelter burned down and Matt had counted seventeen fucking aliens in a subway tunnel God knew how many miles away, they’d tried to avoid them like the plague. How the hell was Matt suddenly figuring it would be a good idea to venture into the lion’s den?

“Are you sure we should be going down there?”

Matt let his head tilt from side to side, his eyes rolling in their sockets. It was as if he was sniffing the stale air coming up from the tunnels. “Yes. Not all good, but safe.”

“Let’s pray it’s not our funeral, then, buddy.”

“Fune...ral? What is this?”

“It’s when you die and they bury your body in the ground. Trust me, it’s something definitely to be avoided.”

Wobbly legs took Foggy down the stairs, and he had to hold on to the handrail. It felt like the ground was swaying beneath his feet, his body suspended in a strange kind of half-drifting, half slanting limbo.

“Don’t want. To die,” he could hear Matt from further down the stairs, who had obviously decided Foggy could now walk without help. Or because he wanted to play vanguard.

“Yeah, no shit. Neither do I.”

“Foggy, hurry. I found.”

“Geez, man, I’m trying, okay?”

When he got to where Matt was expectantly waiting, he could see what he was so excited about. It looked like abandoned leftovers of a homeless person’s sleeping arrangements. A makeshift cardboard bedding layer, and a sleeping bag. A fucking intact sleeping bag, with a zipper, insulated lining and nylon outside liner. It looked like a little piece of heaven.

Foggy crouched down and inspected the find. For all he knew, there could be a rotting corpse inside. Then again, Matt would probably have sniffed that out already. Foggy poked the fabric, fairly sure it was empty, before he pulled at the thing and picked it up.

It was soft and cozy, and it rustled slightly when it moved. It didn’t even smell so bad, although of course there was that faint burnt rubber odor that tainted pretty much everything these days. Foggy wanted to wrap himself in the sleeping bag right here, fall asleep, and never get up again.

He could feel Matt sidle up to him, watched him run his fingertips along the smooth synthetic fabric. “Blanket,” he simply stated.

“Yeah. This’ll be warmer than anything we’ve had in months, my friend. This is, like, the best thing ever.”

Matt was already picking up the cardboard to gather it under his arms. “Foggy, sleep.”

“You wanna sleep?”

“No. Foggy sleep.”

“Yeah, man. I wanna sleep forever. Right here, for all I care.”

“No. Place. Mm. Find... place. Safe place.”

“Damn, Matt, you’re worse than a fucking government building inspector. And please don’t ask me what that is. I’m sleeping right here unless you find us a better place in the next two minutes.”

“Foggy, yes!”

And just like that, Matt was flashing that wide, shit-eating grin, put the cardboard back on the ground, and off he was, bounding along the corridor with an energy Foggy could only admire.

Foggy let his body sag lifelessly against the wall, closing his eyes. The ground was still shifting from side to side beneath his feet. Trains soundlessly rattling into the station below him. Which of course they weren’t. Was he hallucinating now? This was just fucking perfect.

“Foggy!”

It sounded far away, and it took all of Foggy’s energy to open his eyes.

“What?”

“Foggy, come!”

He sucked in a breath, then released it in a bone-deep sigh. Fucking Matt with his fucking mission to keep Foggy safe. Yet, he draped the sleeping bag over his arm, grabbed the cardboard sheet, and started walking.

“Matt? Where the hell are you?”

“Here. Inside. Follow sound. Follow _the_ sound.” It echoed in the empty corridors, bouncing off the white tiles.

 _Jesus_ _, you little shit, I’m trying,_ Foggy thought.

“Sound,” Matt repeated, calling it out louder. “Follow sound, sound, follow, sound.” It reminded Foggy of kids listening to echoes of shouted words on top of a mountain range. But it helped him to trace wherever Matt was hiding.

The thing was that it was also getting darker, the further he walked away from the entrance. This would be a problem if they got too deep inside. For Foggy, at least. And he wondered if Matt even realized this. The whole blindness thing, he had a feeling Matt didn’t fully grasp the concept of eyesight—or his lack thereof.

“Here, Foggy,” Matt said from somewhere to his right, and Foggy stopped.

“Where?”

“Foggy, _here_.” It had a definite _duh_ quality to it. Teetering on the edge of _how can you not tell where I am, you ditz_?

“It’s kinda dark in here. I can’t really see much. Not the way you can. You’re special, remember? You can see in the dark. Well, sort of. You gotta help me out a little, all right?”

There was a shuffling noise, and then the vague silhouette of Matt appeared two feet in front of him. He took Foggy’s arm that was still clutching the sleeping bag. “Foggy, show you. Floor. Mm. Feet. Careful.”

“There’s stuff on the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Like, what? Dead bodies?”

“No. Don’t know. Junk.”

Awesome. They were wading through a garbage dump, now?

The unease tugging at Foggy’s subconscious increased with every step. Being in a place with very little light and no external light source wasn’t a smart idea. In fact, it was a really fucking terrible idea. Damn near close to suicidal.

“Matt,” he whispered. “Maybe we should leave. I don’t think this is the best place to hide out.”

“Foggy, why?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because aliens hide out down here during the day? I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“No worry, Foggy. Found place. Is safe.”

He sighed again. All right, then. Show me what you’ve got, Murdock. Foggy resigned to his fate. Cause, frankly? He just wanted to sleep. Of course he also wanted to live. But that took so much energy.

Matt led him to a small underground walkway off the main passenger corridor. With Matt guiding him, he stumbled along as best as he could in the dark, hitting things every now and then with his feet. It was slow progress, and once he almost tripped and fell over something more solid he couldn’t identify.

They finally came to a doorway where Matt stopped. A door creaked open. Foggy felt for it, and it was cool to the touch. Made of metal.

“Safe place,” Matt stated.

Foggy stepped inside and started feeling around in the pitch-black dark. After a while, he figured it must be some kind of control room. There was equipment and machines with buttons. Cables that connected things.

And, holy shit! There was a flashlight on one of the shelves.

He clicked on the switch, and a beam of light illuminated the small enclosure. Foggy blinked against the sudden brightness, then shined the light around.

Yes, definitely a control room. Small and cramped, but concrete on all sides and only one exit—a thick metal fire door with a twist lock on the inside. He hoped the small vents in the ceiling still supplied this place with fresh air. So, yeah, this was actually perfect! Matt, the bloodhound, had done it again.

“Foggy? Like?”

“Yes, I definitely like, especially the flashlight,” he beamed. “You were right, this is good. At least for a few hours. Can you tell if there’s air coming in from those vents up there?”

“Vents? What is this?”

“Those narrow holes in the ceiling. Can you feel any air current? Like, I don’t know, moving air? If we close the door, we need to make sure we’re not gonna suffocate in here.”

Matt tilted his head up and weaved it around a little. He looked almost like a horror movie caricature, with the flashlight illuminating the sharp angles of his face from below. “Yes, moving air.”

“Okay, perfect. I’ll lock the door, okay? And then I just wanna sleep for the next century or so.”

Foggy went to set up their makeshift quarters on the ground, the cardboard sheet serving as their mattress. Granted, not a particularly comfortable one, but better than nothing. He put down the backpack he’d been carrying and zipped open the sleeping bag to crawl inside.

“Do you want to sleep as well?”

“Sleep, yes. With Foggy.”

Of course. It was like Matt had a pathological need for physical human contact when he slept. Even when they’d camped out in that abandoned youth hostel for one night, Matt had refused to take the upper bunk and had curled up against Foggy on the lower bunk instead. Foggy had bitten back a complaint and just rolled with it.

As soon as Foggy settled on the ground, Matt crouched down and crawled closer. How was this gonna work? The sleeping bag was barely big enough for one person. Then again, Matt was so scrawny and Foggy’s wasn’t quite as bulky anymore either, so maybe they could both fit in without having to leave it largely unzipped. Cause if they did that, it wouldn’t take long for Matt to be hogging all the best parts for himself and Foggy would be left shivering in the dark. That was how it usually worked, unless Foggy had his own blanket.

Foggy slipped his legs into the sleeping bag, and Matt immediately pressed his body close to Foggy’s.

“Geez, dude,” he muttered. “I gotta zip this thing up if we wanna stay warm, okay? Scoot over to the other side, will ya?”

It took some awkward wrestling of the piece of fabric around their bodies, but eventually they ended up like a two-person sausage, and Foggy switched off the flashlight. The room descended into complete darkness.

When Foggy wriggled around to try and get comfortable, he felt a completely irrational but unstoppable giggle bubbling up in his chest. The damn sleep deprivation was taking its toll. And then it exploded, and Foggy couldn’t stop himself.

“Foggy?” Matt mumbled, already half asleep.

Their tightly-wrapped nylon cocoon continued to shake with Foggy’s chortles.

Confusion mixed into Matt’s tired voice. “Foggy, okay?”

“Yes,” he managed to get out between giggles. “I don’t know. I just think this is funny. Don’t you?”

“Mm. No.” Matt’s low, humming voice vibrated against Foggy’s spine.

He managed to suppress the muscle contractions threatening to take control of his diaphragm. “Come on, we’re like a giant bratwurst. The human wiener. I’m imagining us in a sack race right now. We’d be awesome.” He let out another chuckle.

“Not funny,” Matt groused. “Sleep.”

“You’re such a grump. And now I’m wide awake. How messed up is that?”

Matt shifted behind him, and then Foggy felt something touching his head. Matt’s fingers started combing through Foggy’s hair, soft and gentle. What the fuck? Foggy stiffened and held his breath for a startled second, then relaxed when he realized what this was.

Matt and his twisted way of approximating socially accepted reactions into something his brain could process. Foggy kept his body still and let Matt continue to pet his hair, not entirely sure if it was for Matt’s or his own good.

“Feel good?” Matt inquired in a soft voice.

Foggy’s mouth drew into a smile. “Uhm. Kinda weird, but, yeah. It’s nice.”

“Foggy, sleep,” Matt mumbled, his voice now almost inaudible, already thick with sleep.

Yet, he kept fingering Foggy’s hair, and Foggy just... melted. He closed his eyes, drew in a slow, long breath, and let himself tumble into mental freefall. He was asleep in seconds.

+-+-+-+-+

Foggy woke up to complete darkness.

For a moment he panicked. What was wrong with his eyesight?! Where was he? It was quiet, he was alone. It was warm, and, oh.

Sleeping bag. Which was empty, save for himself. Where had Matt gone?

There was a soft noise nearby, which sounded almost like… purring. What the hell?

“Matt?” he asked into the darkness.

“Here, Foggy,” Matt answered from a few feet away, his voice soft and low.

“Are you purring?”

“Mm, no. Is... uhm… Cat.”

“Cat?”

“Cat.”

“What do you mean, cat? There’s a cat in here?”

“Foggy, yes.”

Foggy sat up, fumbling for the flashlight. And lo and behold, Matt was petting a cat that was sitting in his lap. A gray tabby, as scrawny as Matt himself, but well-groomed and apparently completely content.

“How the hell did a cat get in here, Matt?”

“Making sound. Let it in.”

“You let in a cat because it was meowing outside the door?”

“Yes.”

Foggy shook his head. This man. What was _wrong_ with his effin’ brain? Oh, wait, a fucking virus had run a rampage inside it. And apparently eradicated every last shred of common sense in the process.

“And you thought this was a good idea, why exactly?”

“Was alone. Hungry.”

“You fed the cat? With our food?”

“Mm, no. Our food... not good for c-cat.”

Well, at least he’d figured that one out by himself. “I don’t know if you should even touch that thing. It’s probably infested with fleas and lice and tapeworms and whatever other shit it may find down here. How is it even alive?”

“Don’t know. No fleas. I know. I… Sure. Mm, check. What is tape…worm?”

Foggy shook his head again. Jesus Christ. “It’s gross, that’s what it is.”

“C-cat is hurt. Foggy fix?”

“Hurt how?”

“Leg.”

Foggy sighed as he peeled himself out of the sleeping bag. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, his stomach growling. He couldn’t even really remember the last time he’d had a decent meal. Back at the shelter, probably.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to spend our precious medical supplies on a _stray_ _cat_?”

“Is hurt, Foggy,” Matt said with total conviction and a not so subtle chiding undertone. There it was again. The signature Murdock lack of common sense and self-preservation.

Foggy sighed again. He wasn’t really a cat person, but he didn’t want to be a total dick. “Okay, let me see.”

He instructed Matt to hold the cat and tried to place the flashlight so that he could inspect the injury. There was a gash on the cat’s hind leg. Nothing all that serious, but deep enough that it must be hurting. The skin around the wound felt warm to the touch, but not dangerously so.

And strangely enough, the cat never so much as flinched when Foggy examined the leg. Matt was still stroking its fur and it kept purring. It was almost uncanny.

“Foggy, fix?” Matt inquired. Was there true concern he detected in his voice?

“I’ll do what I can, okay?”

Which wasn’t much. He wet a small pad of gauze with some of the vodka from the miniature bottle they’d found and told Matt to hold the cat’s leg while he cleaned out the wound as best as he could. It was too old to stitch it up, so he cut up a small piece of gauze bandage and wrapped it around the cat’s leg. He doubted it would stay there very long.

“There,” he said, “All done.”

“Cat, mm, happy,” Matt stated.

“And you can tell that, how? You a cat whisperer now?”

“Heart. Breathes. Sh-shakes... mm, shakes, not a lot.”

“Vibrations. It’s called purring.”

“Foggy. Cat not good?”

“No, not particularly. Cause Foggy,” he pointed at himself, “See, Foggy doesn’t like cats.”

And then Foggy wanted to slap himself. He was doing the kid talk again. Which was stupid, because Matt wasn’t a goddamn kid.

“Foggy, why?”

“Because, I don’t know… they’re unpredictable. One moment they’re perfectly happy when you pet them, and the next thing they ram their sharp little teeth into your fingers for no reason at all. And they shed their tiny little hairs everywhere. And then they sit and stare at you for hours, and it’s totally creepy.”

“Not creepy. Needs name.”

“Matt, we’re not gonna keep it.”

“Foggy, why?”

“Cause…” Gah! How could Matt even ask that? And why did Foggy always have to be the fucking voice of reason? “Cause we barely have enough food and water for ourselves. We can’t have another living thing we need to constantly watch out for, okay?”

Foggy couldn’t really see Matt’s face, but he was reasonably sure there was a pout plastered on it, or at the very least about to form. And he didn’t want to ascertain that particular suspicion, so he shone the flashlight in the cat’s face.

The cat never reacted, which was… weird. But then again—wait. Was this cat…?

“Matt? Do you think the cat is blind? That it can’t see?”

Matt hummed an unintelligible response that could either be a yes or a no. It’s was probably more like a _I don’t really know what you’re asking me_. And, well, how fucking perfect was it that blind, half feral Matt had adopted a blind, half feral subway tunnel cat? Or vice versa.

Foggy rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve found the only blind cat in New York, or probably the whole world, to ever survive an alien apocalypse. But we still can’t keep it.”

Matt let out a sound that hovered somewhere between a grunt and a whine, and Foggy wanted to say, ‘Stop it, Matt.’ He softened a little.

“Matty, you understand why we can’t keep it, right?”

It took a long moment, but Matt responded with a very low, “Yes.”

“But, hey, you can still name it. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet it again.” Foggy shone the flashlight at the cat’s rear end and took a closer look. “It’s female, by the way. A girl.”

“Milla,” Matt said after a few silent seconds.

“Milla, huh? Did you just pluck that out of the air?”

“Was there. My head.”

Yeah, no shit. Where else would it be? Foggy left it alone. Extracting useful information from Matt’s brain that didn’t relate to immediate problems or threats was often a futile and time-consuming endeavor.

“Come on, we need to get out of here. If it’s daytime, that is. I don’t have any effin’ clue what time of day it is.”

“Morning,” Matt said without hesitation, and Foggy didn’t even want to question how he knew that.

“The next morning, right? Cause I hope I didn’t sleep through a whole day, and then some.”

“Next morning,” Matt confirmed. “Mm, Tues…day?”

Foggy actually laughed out loud at that. “You’re sensing weekdays now?”

Matt grinned slyly. “No. Is joke.”

“You did _not_ just make a joke.”

“Did.”

“Yeah, holy shit, you totally did. Now wipe that smirk off your face and let’s get moving. Unless there’s an alien or ten waiting outside to rip our heads off. Can you do your danger sniffing thing?”

“Did already. Coast is… mm...”

“Clear?”

“Clear,” Matt confirmed.

“Awesome. Time to say goodbye to Milla here, though. I don’t wanna burn out that flashlight any more than I have to, so let’s beat it, okay?”

Matt lowered his head, not quite directing his eyes at the cat, but close. He stroked her head again before he gently placed her on the ground next to him.

“Bye, Milla,” he said just above a whisper, and something clenched around Foggy’s heart. Matt just wanted to make friends and give some of the affection back that he was so desperately looking for himself. Even if it was just a random, scraggy cat that had somehow found him in the most unlikely of places.

No time to dwell on that, though. The burnt rubber stench hit Foggy’s nose like a brick wall as soon as he opened the door. He could only imagine how bad it must be for Matt. The feeling of unease increased a hundredfold and settled somewhere in Foggy’s stomach. Because that smell always meant aliens weren’t far.

He turned to Matt. “Are you sure there aren’t any aliens nearby?”

Matt held his breath for a few seconds and tilted his head to one side. Then... “Yes.”

“It sure smells like there are.”

“Were here. Not long. Back. Nnn. Time. Not mm...”

Matt stumbled on the words, and Foggy figured he was trying to dig around the concept of communicating elapsed time, and failing somewhere along the way.

“It’s cool, I don’t care, as long as they’re gone.”

“Yes, safe now. Foggy, go.”

“All right, buddy. Lead the way.”

It was easier to find the way back, now that he had the flashlight. There was indeed plenty of junk on the ground. Plus, ew. Half decayed rats and other unidentifiable gunk. Gross.

The daylight outside was too bright, the sun only just rising in the perpetually gray-green sky, casting long shadows of bent and broken buildings into the pockmarked streets. Foggy shielded his eyes when he got to the top of the stairs, trying to figure out which way to go.

“Foggy, come,” Matt pranced by his side, tugging at his sleeve. “This way.”

A small smile tugged at Foggy’s lips. His little half-human beacon of light and skill and overall sensory awesomeness. He cuffed him playfully on the upper arm. “Smartass.”

But Foggy followed him anyway.

They had walked maybe half a block, when Matt stopped and listened. The corners of his mouth twitched upward, and that expression somehow reminded Foggy of a definitely amused Matt Murdock, Attorney at Law, trying and failing to hide an all-out smile at something hilarious but probably inappropriate Foggy had said.

“What is it, buddy?”

“Foggy. Look,” Matt said and pointed at something behind them.

“I’ll be damned.”

It was the damn cat, and it was following them.

“It must really like you.”

Matt’s smile widened. “Likes you. Foggy.”

“Yeah, well, the feeling’s not mutual, believe me.”

“Fog _gy_ ,” Matt said, and it was pure, mocking exasperation. “Nice to Milla.”

“Just know that we won’t feed it. Our food goes into human mouths only. Half feral’s, at best. I’m gonna smack you if I catch you sharing anything with that thing. You’re emaciated as it is. You got that?” Foggy was hoping he had his best boss-dad-Foggy voice down for this one.

“Foggy, yes,” Matt confirmed. “Milla like rats. Maybe... share.”

“That’s disgusting. I’m not eating rats. Especially not rats caught by blind subway tunnel cats.”

“Tastes, mm... okay, rats.”

Foggy wanted to gag. “Okay, we’re gonna stop this conversation right here, cause I’m really not keen on having mind movies playing in my head of you chewing on raw rats. Fried rats. Whatever rats.”

“Have noodles. Want?”

Good Lord, yes, did he _want_! “If you can find me some boiling water, then yes. Uncooked? Not so much.”

“You too... mm... picky.”

“Shut up, Murdock.”

And miraculously, he did, but that slight smile never quite left his face.

+-+-+-+-+

THE END.


End file.
